You Better Knot Die

Anthony launch, and with the holidays filling the store with customers, frantic was the word of the day. I barely noticed that Mr. Royal hadn’t brought in his mountain bike as promised. Maybe it was as I’d thought: He’d just agreed to end my questions.

I’d gotten wrapping-desk duty, which it turned out also meant I was the chief question answerer. Most of the questions involved the book launch. Was Anthony going to be there in person? No, because he was a fictional character. Was it true that Mrs. Shedd was the author? I didn’t think so, but who knew for sure? Was it safe to come to the launch since the bad vampires might show up and make trouble? See the answer to question one.

I was so busy I didn’t notice that Adele wasn’t around until Mrs. Shedd came by the wrapping table looking for her. My boss seemed very agitated and I asked if there was anything I could do.

“Adele talked me into having a display of Koo Koo books for the launch. She seemed to think that people would be particularly interested in them. I agreed to the display, but said the books needed to be signed in advance. She was supposed to put up the display today. Now I can’t find Adele or the books.”

Rayaad overheard our conversation and told us Adele had left, saying it was some kind of emergency and she had to drive her boyfriend to the airport. Rayaad remembered that Adele had taken the box of Koo Koo books to be signed with her the night before.

“Those books weren’t hers to take,” Mrs. Shedd said, seeming even more agitated. “Molly, please see what you can do. I better not walk in the kids’ department and see an empty display.”

I had never seen Mrs. Shedd so upset about something as small as a box of books. But I was sure it was just a cover for what was really bothering her. I hadn’t told her that I thought Bradley’s ill-gotten money was hidden somewhere. There was no point in giving her hope unless I could deliver the goods.

I called Adele’s cell phone to read her the riot act. “I can’t bring the books in right now,” Adele said in an irritated tone and made some comment about Mrs. Shedd making a fuss about nothing. She explained William was filling the gas tank and then they were stopping for snacks on the way to the airport. She wasn’t supposed to be back at the bookstore until the evening anyway. When I said Mrs. Shedd was really upset about the books leaving the store and implied this might be the swan song for Adele’s job, she finally got that she was in trouble with our boss.

“Pink, you have to help me,” she said. “The books are at William’s.” She sounded desperate. “I left the keys to his place in my cubby.” She asked me to get them and actually added a please. I must have really gotten through to her.

On the way to the parking lot I ran into Ryder making a video of a woman in a Santa hat sitting on the curb. He saw me rushing and wanted to know what was up. When I told him, he asked if he could tag along. Dinah was just turning the corner. The kids were helping Commander at the mail-it center. When she heard I was on a mission, she said she’d come along, too.

Ryder had his mother’s Mercedes SUV and offered to drive. We all piled in and headed for William’s house. It was late afternoon as we drove onto his street. In the time since I’d been there, the rest of his neighbors had put up their holiday decorations, though for now the lights weren’t on and the street looked normal.

We passed the giant Koo Koo on the lawn as we walked to the front door. Adele had told me she thought the books were in the living room. I was going to get the box and go, but Dinah wanted to see what had made Adele think William was the real A. J. Kowalski. The three of us went into his writer’s room and I cautioned everyone to keep their hands to themselves. I pointed out the worktable. The crochet books were still on it.

Ryder had picked up that William might be the vampire author and was filming the room and adding his commentary. I put my hand in front of his camera and ordered him to stop. No way was he going to post anything to YouTube and ruin the bookstore’s thunder. In my haste I knocked into the table and books and papers fell off. I explained about William’s eye for detail and the three of us went to try to replace all the things on the table just as they had been.

I set down the crochet book William had borrowed from Adele where I thought it had been. A piece of green paper had fallen down with the book. I recognized it as the sheet I’d seen when I’d been there with Adele. I had only gotten a glimpse of it then and remembered she’d said it was notes she’d made when she was figuring out the pattern of the afghan for me. This time I looked at her scribbles. There were all kinds of notes, and in the middle she’d drawn a rectangle and divided it into rows of boxes. The first couple of squares had Xs that probably were meant to stand for the flowers in them. Then she’d changed to just writing in numbers in a couple of the boxes. She’d just drawn one flower with a question mark in each of the rest of the squares. Across the top, in big letters, she’d written a note about the tassel situation stating that there should be one tassel on each corner or just one tassel on one corner, but not one tassel on one corner and two tassels on the next one and then none. I studied the sheet and showed it to Dinah and said William must have been really hard up for a bookmark to have kept the paper.

“Or maybe he was planning to have Anthony make the afghan in the next book,” Dinah joked.

“He’d have a hard time using this for a pattern unless he understood Adele’s secret code,” I said. As I said it my eye went to a book on the floor.

“Ciphers and Codes?” Ryder said, noticing what I’d focused on. I stared at it for a long moment and then suddenly I had a thought.

We all gazed at the paper as I pointed out the afghan drawing. “What if the flowers really were some kind of code?” I said. Before anyone could answer, I pulled out my BlackBerry and scrolled through the contacts until I found Madison’s number.

I called and asked her how she’d come up with the pattern of flowers for the afghan she’d given her brother as a wedding present.

“Not that afghan again,” she said with annoyance in her voice. “I don’t know who told you it was a wedding present. Bradley paid me to make it for him. He wanted it to be some kind of numerology thing. He gave me several long numbers and said they represented important dates for him and Emily and her kids and he wanted them incorporated in the coverlet. They had to be in the right order,” she said. As she said it, I thought of Adele’s note about the tassels and something clicked in my mind.

“And so that’s why you put a tassel on one corner and two tassels on the next. You were showing where the numbers started, weren’t you?” I said.

“Right. It made it weird looking, but Bradley didn’t seem to care,” she said. She said she’d given him the paper with the numbers when she gave him the blanket and forgotten all about it. She faltered and I said I knew she’d made another crocheted blanket for her brother. She admitted that Emily had contacted her with some confused message that Bradley wanted another afghan like it. She’d made up something quickly, but the only thing it had in common with the first one was that the background was green and it had some flowers incorporated in it.

When I repeated what Madison had said, Dinah got a skeptical expression. “Important dates? I don’t think so. I bet all that fuss Bradley made about getting the afghan had nothing to do with sentiment.”

“Exactly,” I said. “More likely it had to do with where he stashed all the money.”

“Numbers, stashed money, huh?” Ryder said. “Like maybe he had one of those Swiss accounts. There was this show on the Crooks and Spies channel called Dude, Where’s the Money? It was all about those accounts that don’t use names, just numbers.”

Ryder’s words hung in the air for a moment, and then everything really made sense. “Of course, that has to be it. Talk about hiding something in plain sight. What a way to keep track of the account number so no one would know. That’s why Bradley wanted the afghan before his faked suicide. And why he took the risk of breaking into my house twice. Now it makes sense why he kept upping his offer to Emily to get it to him. And now I understand why whoever killed Bradley took the afghan with them.”

“Right,” Dinah said. “They had to understand what the flowers meant.”

Ryder held the sheet of paper. “Do you think the clown figured it out?”

I suddenly had a strong urge to look in the garage.

Dinah and Ryder followed me. When I turned on the light, I saw it. The mountain bike was leaning against the wall, and when I took out my print of the photo, it was a perfect match to the size of the tire and the tread.

“Oh my God, William is the killer,” I said. And something else popped forward in my mind. The image of William buying the wool-lined boots for his trip. “He’s not going to Miami, he’s going someplace cold, like maybe to Switzerland.